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Low Power 3GPP (Release 14) NB-IoT Platform for Internet of Things Applications

Research Project

Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects or people called things, where electronics, software, and network work together to open the door for these things to be able to collect and exchange data remotely. The IoT devices serve many applications such as smart cities, wearables and health monitoring, security, and surveillance. Low cost, long battery life, low data rate, low latency, and extended coverage are all requirements to support these IoT devices. Thus, in this project, we target the design and implementation of a 3GPP NB-IoT system as it is an innovative solution to fulfill all of these requirements. The implementation of the NB-IoT system starts with a prototype consisting of two user equipment (UEs) connected through an NB-IoT base station. Then, a real fabricated test chip for the two UEs will follow this prototype. 

 

Objective/Contributions: 

  • An in-depth understanding of the current and emerging IoT access solutions. 
  • Propose an architecture with reasonable-speed and high-capacity network with the NB-IoT technology. 
  • Find the best mechanism to connect the things to the network, depending on the data rate and quality of service (QoS) requirements. 
  • A working prototype of the first NB-IoT standard node (only the RF part needs to be integrated to have a final product) to be commercialized. 
  • The NB-IoT baseband digital processing will be implemented using FPGA prototyping and fabricated test chips. This can be commercialized as a stand-alone product. Moreover, it can be integrated with third-party RF modules that support NB-IoT to have a full NB-IoT module. 
  • Building research capacity for researchers in a relatively new area in Egypt, and more importantly, exploiting multidisciplinary research teams from three different facilities: IoT concept, wireless communication, and digital electronics. 
  • Establishing a solid Working Group in NB-IoT networks research and development. 
  • Building a prototype of NB-IoT architecture that integrates between USRP and LTE. 
  • Joining the international research community for IoT networks in general, and the IoT community in particular. 
  • Integrating Egypt into the large research community of NB-IoT. This community is relatively in its infancy, and hence, the project can play a strategic role to enable Egypt to play an active role in this research community. 
  • Around five high-quality scientific papers will be published in peer-reviewed highly ranked international journals and major conferences in the field.